 Greetings fellow runners, it's time for Q&A. You guys sent in lots of great questions and I'm going to answer them for you in this video. Let's go. So first question from Jacob. Would you still run if there were no running races ever? And the answer to that is very simple, very easy to answer. Yes, absolutely. For me running races are, well it's a lot of fun and it gives structure to my training and you know gives me a goal and something to measure myself up against and to achieve certain times etc. So I love races and as I said they do give structure to my training but my real joy from running comes from the everyday grind and doing the training and seeing the improvements and also just the joy of running itself. Even if I didn't have a watch and I didn't care about times and I didn't have any races I would still be out there running almost every day I think because it's just such a nice way to just get out, move and it just feels good. So the answer is yes, I would still run if there were no races. Lee Louch asks, what are the benefits of incline walking? 15% incline on a treadmill for your overall endurance. Yeah, incline walking is great. I mean you would be walking in pretty slow pace but you would be breathing pretty hard. So it would be pretty mild on your structural system. Your legs wouldn't really be that much taxed because it's so slow but you would still be able to breathe. So for someone with, well it really depends. I would say that that's fine but you do get good at what you're doing. So if you do a lot of incline walking you will get good at incline walking. If you want to be good at running you should probably do more running. So I would say that although there are definitely benefits I would probably look at incline walking as more of a type of cross-training something you can do to sort of alleviate or to add variation into your running routine rather than something that you do specifically to get better at running. It would probably then be better to just run at a comfortable pace, easy pace and also do workouts of course and just generally train more specific. But incline walking can still be great. I'm just going to check that I'm still filming here. Yes, sometimes it shuts off and I'm going to try to do this as a no editing clip. Alright, next question from Amadeus. He asks, what do you think about training with small weights for an unproportional muscle situation? It's not too healthy long term but I was wondering about running with weights. So I assume you mean like running holding small weights or perhaps wearing a weight vest or something like that. I would say no, I would not recommend doing it actually. I'm not a fan of the weight vest idea unless you're training for a race where you need to carry a big backpack or you're training to get better at carrying a backpack or pulling something heavy or whatever. Again, it's the specificity thing. If you just want to be good at running though, you could take off the weight vest and just run faster instead. And it would be the same stimulus, but it would be more specific to a more appropriate running pace. So in this case, if you have muscle imbalances where perhaps one leg has some weaknesses compared to the other leg or arms or whatever, I think probably the better thing to do would be to work on form drills, to do running drills where you practice your form and work on sort of becoming more symmetrical in how you move and also do strength training, specific training in the gym to strengthen those muscles that are weaker. And of course, over time, as long as you keep, as long as you stimulate both sides of the body equally, so if I'm assuming that you meant like running with maybe one weight because your right side is weaker than your left and you want to strengthen it, I think it's better to just train both sides by doing single hand movements or single leg movements or whatever and then over time, it's going to actually equal out. So that's my recommendation there. Jan wants to know, do you have at this point in time the endurance to do the marathon without going in the basement, really, you know, giving it all you have and being really wiped out and what time do you expect for the run? Good question. I think yes. I mean, right now I'm sort of coming back from injury and I'm building up my endurance in terms of my ability to do long runs and I haven't done a lot of long runs now. So I think if I went out now and did a marathon, I definitely am confident that I could finish it, but it would trash my legs because I haven't done the necessary training. If we're talking more about like in general, when I'm in good training without having actually done a full marathon build up, I think I could and even today if we ignore the sort of muscular endurance aspect of it, I'm pretty sure I could pull out like a marathon in like, let's say three and a half hour. A three and a half hour marathon for me at this point, I think would feel pretty doable, not really that big a deal. But then again, a marathon is so long that it's almost always a big deal and I'm not going to pretend there and say like it's no big deal because I haven't even tried a marathon so I don't know. But yeah, I'm pretty sure I could do a marathon now in 330, but it would be pretty tough for my legs. He also wants to know how many kilometers I run each week. And the answer to that now is that I'm currently at about 50 kilometers per week. So I got up to about 100k back in 2019 and then I had some health issues and then I've had an injury and another injury like it's been a big mess for the last year essentially, but I'm starting to get back to it 50k a week and I'm hoping to get back up to 100k per week by the end of the year and then keep building on that towards essentially more and more mileage as much as I can tolerate over the next five years or so. And then we'll see. He also says that Sylvester Stallone trained two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening for Rambo and that's a lot of training and that's cool. All right, Donna wants to ask and Donna is actually my coaching client. She wants to know, do you recommend having a snack unless there's someone else with the same name though? I don't think so though. Do you recommend having a snack prior to a morning run rather than running on empty? Does this affect cortisol levels and fat burning for the remainder of the day? It really depends a lot on the person. Fat burning is mostly affected by just running in general and it's not like eating carbs, even on a run will destroy or fat burning on that run like some people think. I feel like if you have a snack before or if you have a snack during or any time you have a snack, it doesn't matter as much. In terms of your cortisol levels, I would imagine and this is just speculation, but I would imagine that cortisol levels would be better overall if you do have a snack. It's quite taxing. It depends on the run, right? If you go for a really long run in the morning on empty and you're like maybe glycogen depleted after sleeping your liver is out of glycogen so you're essentially sort of getting into some blood sugar issues this would be pretty taxing to your system and perhaps even cause a cortisol issue long term. So I would say that if you wake up and you're just going for a short run you don't have to think about it, you can just go for a run. But then again if you do feel like having a snack like having a banana maybe, that could also be a good idea. Certainly if you end up noticing over time that your quality of the run like suppose you're going out for an hour every morning or something and well I know the training that you're doing of course Donna but suppose someone was going out every morning for an hour for example they as long as they feel like that's fine and they have good quality on the run and they feel good without having a snack then that's probably fine, but if they feel like they need it then they probably need it and they should take it. So it really depends on the person and I recommend just following the body basically and it's not going to affect your fat burning too much. As a runner, as in terms of your fitness progression running itself is going to stimulate that fat burning quite a lot even if you do eat a snack. Philip says as a fellow flat footer what obstacles have you experienced and what practices to alleviate it? I'm actually not really a flat footer I don't have a flat footer I have actually quite a high arch but I do pronate quite a lot pronation is fine though, it's natural, it's normal I pronate a little bit more than normal and it's probably because of my ankle mobility being very limited due to some injuries in the past etc like in the way, as a child like way back so I sort of pronate by cheating essentially without going through the ankle joint I go around it but I'm not really flat footed but I have really really wide feet so that's probably why you're thinking that I'm flat footed if you are flat footed though it's probably okay, unless it leads to injuries it's probably okay, we're all different and we don't have to necessarily change the way we are too much but we can make an effort I think it might be beneficial or if it's causing problems so I would suggest perhaps just doing things like ankle sorry, towel grabs, is that what they call it? when you have your foot on a towel and you sort of grab the towel if you look up exercises for plantar fascia plantar fasciitis you'll see, you'll find the most exercises that sort of strengthens the plantar fascia and the arch for arch training there are some exercises that will sort of strengthen the arch a little bit and get that happening which might be beneficial also maybe running in shoes that are wide enough for your feet so that you can really splay your toes and perhaps running barefoot as well would be a good way to sort of strengthen that arch and walking around more barefoot that's probably my recommendations I'm gonna check the camera again I'm so paranoid because sometimes it's just stopping which is weird busy wave why does running make me feel weighted down like I'm wearing heavy boots I'm about 15 pounds overweight but I had the same feeling when I was a normal weight well yeah, I mean you can sometimes feel heavy running chances are you're maybe running a little faster than you should like you're maybe pushing the pace so much that it's actually quite an intense run and then you're gonna basically feel heavy it could be the reason maybe in that case just take it easy just ease up on the pace and just take it easy and relax and enjoy it and you might feel better another reason sometimes where you might feel heavy is if you're not getting enough carbohydrate it's very common for runners to talk about heavy legs when they're not carved up to the max so definitely focus your diet around carbohydrates get at least 70-80% of your calories from carbohydrates that's my recommendation and that could help look at your sleep of course that's a situation as well and then I notice that I feel heavy as in my physical weight feels heavier when I'm running while being sore or if I'm sore from a strength workout the day before or something then I can feel really physically heavy and I think it's because the muscle fibers aren't firing well, they're firing but a lot of the muscle fibers are not able to produce enough power because they're going through this inflammation process as a result of the strength running perhaps so look a little bit at on the timing maybe of when you're running compared to other things could be perhaps that's what it is it could also be that you are wearing heavy boots I don't know, are your shoes running shoes or are they heavy boots? that could be a situation too Rob, snow looks pretty opposite weather here minus 36 wow when they say or probably talking about 36 degrees plus actually anyway question is when they say training at altitude you can be beneficial for elite athletes what actually does it do to the system how long does it take to reap the benefits how high above sea level is considered altitude training anyway great question, huge question very simply put when you go up in altitude the pressure there is lower so there's essentially less oxygen per square or per cubicle anyway less oxygen for the same volume less oxygen in the air essentially and you are the pressure of oxygen compared to the content of oxygen in your blood called the partial pressure is less because there's less oxygen in the air kind of weird way of explaining it but the point is that you're not able to get as much oxygen into your system as you do when you're at sea level and this means that you have less oxygen to do the work and oxygen is really key in doing the aerobic metabolism that's necessary for running so the higher up you get the less oxygen you're able to take in and the less you're going to be able to produce work and so that's what happens and this is good of course because the body adapts so when the body is experiencing this hypoxic situation which means that it doesn't have enough oxygen over time it produces more red blood cells with more hemoglobin and these red blood cells with the hemoglobin transport oxygen so you essentially get more oxygen carrying cells and that means you can sort of tolerate the reduced oxygen level and then when you then go down to sea level again suddenly you have an excess of red blood cells and you're able to take up even more oxygen than someone else at the sea level anyway so that's the idea how high? well it's pretty linear but you'll notice mostly an effect for endurance training they talk about things like they talk about altitudes like 1500 meters at least maybe 1800 meters really that's like medium to low altitude and then the ideal altitude is like 2000 meters, 2003, 2005 maybe up perhaps as high as 3000 meters so let's just say plus just above 2000 meters it's probably ideal and you need to be there for like 3 weeks probably for the optimal effect maybe even longer so 3 to 6 weeks maybe ideal for getting that effect and then you go down to sea level and the effect lasts also 3 to 6 weeks or something like that I think very interesting topic vegan pajamas brand new runner hair I want to start running but walking a lot has given me mild plantar fasciitis can I still do light jogging I'd say yes you can still do light jogging unless it makes your plantar fasciitis worse you have to just keep an eye on it and perhaps do some of those exercises that I talked about earlier in this video about strengthening your arch and strengthening the plantar fascia and it's just a matter of keeping an eye on it really and as long as it doesn't get worse with jogging you can definitely do that perhaps consider reducing the walking a little bit and balancing it out effervescent bubbles how do you feel about running magazines I like running magazines because it's just a casual read you don't have to commit you can just look at the pictures and read little things there I quite like reading it but of course you do have to take it with a grain of salt because they're all about the hype fancy sort of big things they sort of blow it out of proportion sometimes where they take science and they sort of make it into entertainment so well some magazines are better than others Dennis he would like to know how to safely increase mileage I've said in the past that you increase it stay stable for 4-6 weeks and then you can increase again but only one aspect at a time how much should we increase when we increase it and he's building up his mileage also with this approach are there so-called down weeks or is it all just no down weeks his goal is to keep injury free, build up mileage to have marathons, struggle with injuries great question yeah well first of all how much can you increase well it really depends on the person their history, their goals how fast they want to progress but I would say anywhere between mileage you can increase from one week to the next someone like you currently have like 25k per week you know a conservative jump would probably be to go to 30 but you could perhaps even go to 35 I probably wouldn't go much longer than that though so let's say you do go to 30 you jump up to 30 and then you stay there for two weeks perhaps so when I said like four weeks and then you increase it again and again like a plateau kind of thing that's sort of the general principle but in practice it's going to be more up and down so yes there are down weeks so in your case I would probably do something like 25 you're at that now then you would go up to like 30 you would keep it at 30 again and then you go down to 25 again go back up to 30 35 and perhaps depending on how that feels you go straight down to 30 again the next week or you can maintain one more week at 35 before going down to 30 and then you'll do a couple of weeks at 30 again back up to 35 and then another week at 35 perhaps back down to 30 and now you can jump all the way up to 38 or 40 or you know depending on how it feels and how sustainable it is so you modulate it and really you can have a plan but at the end of the day you have to just feel it and constantly modify your plan a little bit along the way which is why it's good to have a coach or to just pay very good attention to your training yourself keep a training log log all your training have a plan and incorporate those down weeks but don't have a rigid plan where it's like 2 weeks up, 1 week down, 2 weeks up, 1 week down that can be the general idea but then you do want to sort of ask yourself how are the legs feeling, is it a bit too much yes let's take it down a notch if it feels a bit too much but if it's like totally fine we'll keep it at that for a little longer or go in further up and remember that it's cumulative, mileage is cumulative so 1 week at a higher mileage might feel fine but 2 weeks that's when you start noticing that it takes a toll and you might want to bring it down again before going back up so that's the idea, good luck with your half marathons let us know about how it goes Sophie she has a long question, I've already read it so I'm just going to sort of summarize it a little bit she wants to know how to keep intervals interesting she gets stuck with the sessions, she has her bread and butter type sessions, you know, classic 6 times 8 other meters 10 times 4 meter type of sessions and she wants to know how to spice it up well, first of all I would say that those are great sessions and I'm actually a big fan of not spicing it up too much, I'm a big fan of actually just keeping it steady, I do recommend this book Daniel's Running Formula, it's just very simple straight forward sessions, essentially what you're trying to do is just accumulate time at different intensities and over time you'll build the amount of time that you can do on each session, so if you're used to doing 10 times 400 meter at threshold, well maybe start trying 10 times a thousand meters at threshold, you could also of course, if you want to spice it up after all, you could do pyramid sessions where you run longer and longer intervals at all you start and then you'll build up the length of the interval and then you'll build them down again in a session or you could do the same with speed where you run faster and faster you could have a session where you do both threshold and speed work in the same session and you mix it up a little bit there are countless types of sessions out there if you want to be casual about it though and play around with just like a fun session, you could do a fart click which could either be like a completely random like a traditional original type of fart click where you just go out and run and you randomly choose to run faster at random times, so like just let's go fast up this hill let's hit the gas and go threshold type of intensity for like a kilometer or two let's do a sprint over this little area or you just sort of play around with the speed a little bit a more modern type of fart click is where you do like maybe 1k on 1k off 1k on, 1k off 1 minute on, 1 minute off 2k on, 1k off wherever, where the on perhaps might be like your marathon pace or your half marathon pace, your threshold pace and off might be a little bit slower than that but still pretty steady and you can do it as a continual run those are some ideas anyway how to build upper body for runners without a gym okay well, first of all, depends on your goals right, but if you are a runner and you're looking to perform well as a runner I wouldn't actually do upper body gym work to be honest, you say you lost the muscle mass now that the gyms have closed well, that's probably a good thing for your running performance I would probably focus more on lifting for the legs it's like deadlifts, squats lunges hip core exercises but arms and upper body that weight isn't really going to help you run faster but it will make you heavier it's just going to make you slower as a runner so that's my opinion on it, I wouldn't actually do upper body strength but if you are interested in doing it or you just want to maintain a healthy upper body, not really that much muscle bulk but you just want to stay healthy perhaps you could just do the classics, you could just do some push ups push ups are great you can do pull ups if you get a pull up bar or if you can hang from a tree or you can hang under your table and do essentially rowing where you hang under a table and pull yourself up almost like a pull up those would be my thoughts I guess food run balance is very difficult how to gauge how much calories you need or even to gain muscle etc try calculators but they don't work timing well, to be honest the way I do it is that I eat the same thing pretty much every day or I have a very very good idea of exactly what I'm eating and then I weigh myself at regular intervals, you can do it every day or you can do it once a week, it's probably better you weigh yourself once a week and if you see your weight dropping then you can conclude that whatever you are eating is not enough and you are losing weight or if you're gaining weight you can say whatever you're eating is probably more than you need right and then that's fat weight really when it relates to food but of course if you're building muscle then you're going to gain some muscle too but in order to gain muscle you definitely need to eat more than your maintenance level of calories so if you're building, working on in the gym and you're doing muscle training and you're not seeing an increase in your weight over the course of several months you could conclude that you need to eat more essentially it could also be related to your training details right like maybe you need to train differently of course but typically eating more will result in weight gain even if some of it is fat and some of it will be muscle if you're lifting weights I think it depends on the situation but I guess my answer is that when I eat a banana I count 100 calories it might be more, it might be less but over time it averages out and I get my own idea of what a calorie is it's sort of like calibrating based on what you're eating so over time I know that I eat about I need about 2300 calories plus my exercise calories it doesn't matter if that's actually 2300 calories or not the food that I'm eating what matters is that I've found that I found out that what I call 2300 calories works I'm saying it's kind of difficult to explain but the main point is just monitor your food intake and monitor your weight over time and calibrate it based on whether you go up or down in weight if you want to talk more about it maybe you could send me a message on my website there's a link in the description to my website send me a personal message there or like an email essentially and we can talk more about it we could even do a coaching session if you want to discuss it more in detail how do you sum up a diet in just a few sentences I don't know I'm vegan, I eat a whole food plant based diet, I eat lots of fruit, I eat lots of vegetables I eat oatmeal I currently bake my own bread yeah, and I take a bunch of supplements too who did wants to know would it be possible for someone with weak knees to work up and have a running practice I've tried in the past but my knees started hurting I gave up I might have gone too fast forward in the process let's make sure it's still filming it's still filming, oh wow half an hour, that's a long video but I guess that's how it is when you do Q&A so well the main thing is build up slowly build up slowly, maybe you went too fast like you said yourself so take it slowly, build it up gradually that's your main thing and whatever you think is gradual do it even more gradual and whatever you think is a slow progress do it even slower than that give yourself like a year to slowly increase your running practice and get to a point where you're running regularly or at least six months if you have knee issues it could be related to several things that you're pretty weak maybe in the quads, the stabilized knee in the muscles around the knee so perhaps you would be well off doing some strength training maybe lifting some weights even again you have to start very gradual though and also it could be related to your running form perhaps if you notice that you're landing with the foot quite far in front of you with a straight knee that's definitely not good for your knees so make sure you're landing more underneath your center of mass with a little bit of a bent knee okay and the easiest way to do that is just to increase your cadence just to run a little bit more steps per minute take a little shorter steps and instead of doing like boom boom boom you do more like like your little tiny dog imagine that you're a tiny dog and you'll be fine well there are many reasons why someone might have knee issues but strengthening the knees strengthening the legs doing exercises like that and most of all just building up very gradually start by going for a walk and running just just run like 2 minutes and then the next day, 2 days later or whatever you can run 3 minutes and just take it very very gradual and you'll probably be fine and of course you can contact me as well if you want to have a coaching session for you or anything like that if you're interested are the bear sense how much impact do you think diet plays in performance and he or she talks about how a lot of fitness influencers and trainers etc speak of very strict diets and when you see a lot of the top athletes they're not really eating a perfect diet, they seem to eat sometimes quite unhealthy and let's do that first the main thing for performance is going to be hydration, calories and carbohydrate even if your diet is crap in terms of quality as long as you're getting enough calories and you're getting plenty of carbohydrates and you're staying hydrated and you're getting enough sleep and all that that's going to be the main factors for your performance then of course there's all the micronutrients and the quality of your food which will affect your health and your health is closely linked of course to your performance but you got to remember also that health is sort of like a cumulative thing so when you're looking at some of the best performers they're typically in their 20s or perhaps 30s so they're very young and when they're young when humans are young you can sort of get away with it a lot because the body is still running on youth if you know what I mean it hasn't been worn down yet and the cumulative effects of an unhealthy diet and lifestyle hasn't yet caught up and they sort of compensate a little bit by being very active right so that's one of the factors and then in terms of like are they really eating that healthy or not I don't know it depends on the individual a lot of the times they will have a diet that's actually very healthy and on top of that they'll also have some unhealthy foods like candy and stuff and in that case I don't think it matters that much because they're still getting all the nutrients in through a healthy diet but their calorie needs are so large that they can also eat junk on top of that and that wouldn't be as bad as if someone had low calorie in taking just a junk because they would miss out on a lot of nutrition and of course the elite athletes they typically get what they need because they're just eating so much in general that's also an aspect of it another aspect is whether or not an athlete would actually be even better if they optimize their diet and the answer I think is yes so if you have a person an athlete performing great but having a pretty crappy diet and they're still at the elite level well maybe they would be even better because of their crappy diet so are they good because of their crappy diet or are they good in spite of it right? next question is what's your most controversial topic on either training or nutrition that's difficult to answer I think depends how you look at it some of my opinions are controversial for most people and for the mainstream and according to mainstream media it's controversial carbohydrates are super important to human health we need to eat lots of carbs sugar is not really a big problem in fact it's one of the best things you can have in your diet in the form of fruit and also just carbs carbs are awesome as an athlete and for health for the majority of people and because of the mainstream media that's probably a controversial opinion but if you look at the science it's actually not a controversial opinion at all it's the consensus there's so much science backing up the idea of eating a carbohydrate focused diet predominantly carbohydrate and also performance data on carbohydrate supplementation leading to better performance so I guess that would be one way to answer that question last question from are the bear how do you tell if you're responding to a particular session in order to determine what session you need in your training regimen chairs from Hegedal literally so well not literally but close by so that's a difficult question to answer to be honest I would say the best way to do it is to keep a training log and to over time and when I say over time I really mean over years of training when you have your best performances and then look at what you did in order to get those performances that would be the only real way to know but in terms of the and even then you wouldn't truly know but in terms of the short term probably just whatever feels the best for you and where you can notice that it gives you more than it takes from you but it's a challenging thing to do it's a great question and not easy to answer few more questions three more to be exact and then we're done Tara wants to know have you ever had Skyatica if so how did you handle it did you still train or did you rest until you recovered if you still trained did you change anything about how you trained while well having Skyatica good question the Skyatic NERB goes from your back to your leg essentially especially behind the hamstrings and the glutes that's where Skyatica pain typically shows up I haven't had a lot of problems with it to be honest I get it when I'm driving and I have to put a book or something underneath my butt cheek after a while in order to alleviate it I don't know that much about it so I couldn't really give you a great answer unfortunately what I can say though is that I like to sometimes heavy lifting or running I like to hang from a bar just like a dead hang because it sort of elongates your spine and alleviates some of the pressure because over the course of the day and during heavy lifting and heavy running you compress the back and the back compression causes Skyatica pain usually by irritating the nerve at the side of the back and so one way to do is to hang and do some stretches maybe to sort of open it up a little bit and of course get enough sleep because when you're lying there horizontal those pads in between your back they open up again another thing is to strengthen your back so that you have a strong back that does not compress as much because the muscles take a lot of the load rather than your back and the best way to do that is to lift weights, quite heavy weights but of course again you do want to build up to it very gradually I would recommend the dead lift for example doing dead lifts are great for back strength and for just good human fitness and health so I would probably recommend that in terms of whether you should rest until you recover etc I'm not quite sure, you should probably talk to a physiotherapist or something about that even doing that though, if you have this issue now just go to a physiotherapist get an appointment and just get some advice, some expert advice even if it's a short 15 minute consultation just to get some general advice on what to do because there's no point in just waiting around for it to get better if it doesn't you're sort of wasting your time if that happens so just get expert advice and do what you need to do and I hope you feel better soon I do know a lot of runners with sciatica pain though and they typically say that they're able to train through it and sort of manage it, right and it doesn't really necessarily get that much worse churn I'm wondering how beneficial it would be to keep moving on rest days like going for walks or something I'm assuming that the benefit would be of increased blood flow or is it better to rest and minimize movement that's a great question that I've also done in my videos I think it's difficult to say I don't know if anyone knows the definite answer to this but I will say that my opinion is that it really depends so yes it's because of the increased blood flow so that's the idea if you move and you run a little bit easy on a rest day you'll get more blood flow you'll repair your muscles and tendons etc a little bit faster, right yes but at what cost because if you had a really taxing session yesterday maybe you really need to rest today in order for your system and your endocrine system and just the energy systems to recover fully so it's a matter of your structural system versus your system as a whole and I think your system as a whole in terms of your energy levels your veins and your endocrine system etc is better off your hormones and stuff is better off resting completely but your structural system is probably well sometimes that's also better off resting completely if it was really really taxed the other question is can you get away with doing light training while still recovering because if not how would you be able to accumulate a lot of volume to be good at endurance sports, right you need to accumulate a lot of volume which means that even on rest days you need to get in a little bit of training and if you keep it light you'll probably be able to do it while recovering so yeah I don't know if that answered your question I'm not entirely sure basically last question Vesna wants to know what kind of socks do you recommend running socks Jinji socks I, N, J, I, N, J, E I sorry at the end Jinji socks they're the toe socks that I bought because I had Vibram 5 finger shoes and they're the only socks that fit or they're probably other brands too and then I started liking them so much that even now that I'm running normal running shoes I just enjoy socks because they feel better they allow my foot to move more naturally inside the shoe and my toes to splay and I avoid blisters because they protect against shaving in between the toes and I just enjoy them so those are the socks that I recommend wow lots of question, long video thanks though for your questions, I think a lot of them were really great questions if you have more questions if you want some assistance perhaps in your running journey remember that I do offer coaching and it might be as simple as sending me an email and asking me some questions and that's not necessarily going to mean that it's coaching you can ask me questions and I'll answer them if I have time or when I have time and if you want formal coaching we can arrange for that too and of course give it a like the video, share with your friends and have an awesome day and happy training leave a comment, let me know what you think about what I told you or what I answered based on your question and stay tuned for more videos alrighty, bye